


'Lone

by yuletide_archivist



Category: The Stand - Stephen King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-22
Updated: 2005-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:57:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by cobaltnine</p><p>A moment on a hill in Boulder; Stu and Nick reflect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Lone

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Eurydice

 

 

The sunset was over; the day of work over. Time had gone back to the old ways; you got up when the sun did. Nick liked it; it was a city, but a city gone wild in the most peaceful way. He'd watched the sun go down on the hill for the last half-hour, climbing up here after going over a few ideas for tomorrow with the others on the Electric Committee. Grabbed a lantern for the trip back and two bottles of pop. He'd made his list of things to do, to think about, and was making lists of other things, counting ideas like rosary beads. Someone else had climbed to the other side of the hilly park. He peered a moment before waving at Stu. Stu was quiet, but it was good. There'd been time enough for meditation and company was nothing to sneeze at.

Nick waved his hand at the beer the other man offered, gesturing towards the water. A line ran around a rock, roughly tied, to the top of two clinking bottles. They bobbed like fish cooling in the springs.

"How's the power station looking?"

_Good enough. Not my thing, really, but Brad seems to know what's going on. Doesn't look too messed up._

Stu took another long drag from the can. Until the power went back on, the river was the best they'd be doing for a refrigerator, but it was working mighty fine for some things.

"You know, every time I stop thinking about something practical, everything freezes up." Nick turned on the bench of the picnic table. The early evening blue had covered the sunset a while back, and soon he'd want to light the lantern. Looking out over Boulder was still something strange; landing on an alien city. Nothing moved. Archaeology of the all-too-recent, where he and Stu and the others were organizing the dig, and people like Brad were specialists with knowledge that almost-not-quite worked out the problems. It was a hell of a way to run an operation. Maybe the city wasn't peaceful. In his lists he noted that the population of Boulder, post-mortem, seemed low. Too low. He'd seen little towns that wouldn't have made a dot on the map that had more bodies than Boulder.

"Every time I stop," Stu continued, now that Nick could see him better, "and I look out over this place, it's just too much. The last few months..." He shook his head. "I think we're all hoping this is some bad movie. One of those sci-fi double features. You ever see those?"

Nick waved his hand back and forth. Sometimes. Hard to follow sometimes, though you could get the general feel. He flapped open his hands.

"Oh, yeah, or those pulpy old books. Gas station books," he said, and regretted it. "Bus stations. And once it's over you get a weird feeling the whole night sometimes. Maybe it's hard to sleep. But you don't tell anyone. You're alone in that. Although you know - well, you don't - you hope someone else feels the same thing. But you aren't going to talk about it."

Or you can't, Nick thought. How do you? Even with words, even with hundreds of words.

 _Maybe that makes us different?_ he scrawled.

"Maybe. Maybe it's worse for some people. I never did settle down like anyone else."

Nick put up his hand for Stu to pause. He jumped down from the table and pulled the string of ginger ale out of the river. Behind him a light flickered. The bottles glistened like two glassy green fish, the labels rippled from the soak. He popped one open on the edge of the table and sat, gesturing for the story to continue.

"You know what I did Nick? In the Before?" Before, Beforetime. A long time ago, in a place far far away; it was a sci-fi space opera or a fairy tale, but Before had become something Stu didn't think about, just like he didn't linger near gas stations. "I sat outside the...I sat outside with old men. I had another Before, too. I worked at a calculator factory and I drank cheap beer. Everyone else was dead. Lost a lot of people. One by one. Then I lost Janie, who lost Angie. So you know this whole plague...this whole black death...this doesn't seem to mean much after that."

Nick pointed at Stu, at himself, at the lights in the center of Boulder where most everyone lived now.

"Yeah, we all have to come back though." He crushed his empty can against the table. "You know, I thought about the future twice. Then I stopped. It didn't seem like it made a big deal anymore. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...so I stopped. But now here I am, thinking again." Dim lights shone in the houses in the center, a few further out. Most everyone together. "I think we all remembered how to be afraid of the dark," he said, circling, in the air, the cluster. "Big bad lion's gonna get us if we're not around the campfire."

Nick folded his hands together at the thumbs and flapped them a different way than before.

"Yeah. Mean ol' Mr. Crow." Stu shook his head. "Ain't right to think about him. Nick, what'd you do?"

_Here and there. Little jobs. Under the table. Thought maybe someday college. Sometimes you get $$ for being different._

"Yeah, someday. Seems like a lot of us said that."

_Doesn't seem to matter anymore. Should have farmed more._

Stu laughed. Nick liked the way Stu laughed; honest. His eyes crinkled. "Yes sir, my abilities to solder calculator parts the same way for 8 hours at a time are in hiiiiigh demand." He picked up the lantern. "Think we can walk back like this? Talking? I hate to say it, but even if you aren't reading my lips, I'm gonna talk. It's too quiet these days."

 _Better now? More people?_ Walking while writing wasn't too bad, as long as they walked slow. He juggled the bottle, but someone else'd grab the ones on the table. It was a good overlook. It fit awkwardly in his other pocket, almost empty, but he still couldn't just leave an empty.

"Yeah. Never thought I'd see this many more people. Hell, never thought I'd leave Arnette."

Nick pulled his eyebrows in.

"Nope. Never saw the point. Before, yeah, but once you get stuck doing four by eight a week...ain't much to look out at. You don't know that?"

He flipped back a page and pointed. _Here and there_. Flipped forward again.

_Been a long time since I stayed in any one place. Looks like here might be it._

Stu smiled. "Aw, Nick. Come on, think of the future." He kicked the dirt, but made sure to look back up before talking. "Never did like cities much. Even this one."

_People make a place._

He had flipped far back to it.

"That's a good one, Nick. That's a good one. But where'd everyone go?"

 


End file.
